This article is about the phonetic decipherment of the fifth Hebrew letter called 'he'. I will present numerous points of evidence which in my view constitutes a proof that the letter 'he' (letter 'h') was originally a letter 'w'; it is important to note here that I am speaking of 'letters' as phonetic categories, not graphemes. When I am speaking of graphemes I will specify 'graphemes'. Also my transliterations are used to refer to particular graphemes of Greek and Hebrew. For this study I have analyzed Biblical Hebrew-Greek transliterations, searched language books for evidence to be used in the comparative method, and have also done epigraphic studies.
The grapheme is the graphic form of a particular letter. A phonetic category may be, for example, as Ancient Hebrew 'U' (the letter "vav" or "vau") which holds the sounds /v/, /u/ (as in /but/), /ou/ (as in /could/), /au/ (as in /sauce/). Also /ou/ and /au/ are phonetic categories: there is /ou/ as in /could/ and /ou/ as in /foot/, /au/ as in /sauce/ and /au/ as in /cough/.
In my articles I will present the Greek alphabet letters in the following transliterated form: a, b, g, d, e, z, eh, th, i, k, l, m, n, ks, o, p, r, s, t, u, ph, kh, ps, oh; where, for example, 'e' stands for epsilon versus 'eh' which stands for eta, 'k' stands for kapa versus 'kh' which stands for khi, and 'o' stands for omikron versus 'oh' which stands for omega. It is important to note that the 'h' is used here to distinguish graphemes and in the cases of omega and eta it is not used for phonetic indication.
Most of the Ancient Hebrew letters have their phonetic values known with certainty. This article focuses on the determination of one of the letters for which there has been little evidence as to its original pronunciation. In this paragraph I have put a star next to those letters for which there has seemed to be little evidence for its original pronunciation. Such evidence would be forthcomming in subsequent articles. The original Hebrew alphabet is transliterated as follows: A, B, G, D, W*, U, Z, H*, J*, Y, K, L, M, N, X*, O*, P, C*, Q, R, S, T. The critical letters indicated by the asterisk are called 'he', cheth, tevath, samek, ayin, and tsawday. It should be noted that the grapheme of the fifth Hebrew letter in the early Hebrew alphabet appeared as our capital letter 'E'.
Typically Hebrew names ending in the letter 'he' are understood as /ah/ and are transliterated that way. One example is "Zachariah" which is translated (notice I said "translated" instead of "transliterated") as 'Zacharias' (Matthew chapter 23 verse 35). I said 'translated' because in the Greek text the spelling is actually 'zakhariou'. So 'zakhariou' is the actual transliteration of Hebrew 'ZKRYW' (2Kings 14:29). Another example of a Hebrew-Greek transliteration can be found with the person Uriah. The spelling in the Greek text is actually 'ouriou' and it corresponds to the Hebrew spelling 'AURYW'. The first sound is as the English 'ow' or the German 'au' (/aaou/ where /aa/ is as in /father/ and /ou/ as in /foot/ : inverted capital omega in the International Phonetic Alphabet). The second 'ou' corresponds to /oo/ as in /moon/ or /food/. This leads me to understand the fifth Hebrew letter as the 'w' semivowel having the vowel sound /oo/. In several hundred years of recent tradition the letter vav ("vau") 'U' has been understood to carry the sound /oo/, but it carried the sound /ou/ not /oo/ (the sounds are as indicated above); so when Greek 'ou' was used to transliterate 'U' it was for the sound of /oo/ and when 'ou' was written for 'W' it corresponded to /oo/. From my studies of Biblical transliteration it seems that when 'W' was pronounced /w/ it was not transliterated by any letter.
We can also find evidence in Coptic. This is reasonable as Coptic is the last stage of Egyptian and Egyptian is related to Ancient Hebrew, though I will have to work on proving that in subsequent articles. Yet we are dealing with ancient language elements and I shall be using other outgroup comparisons in this proof. I will transliterate Coptic as I transliterate Greek, though I will use the grapheme '2' for the letter hori. Actually that grapheme looks like the letter hori. I noticed that the Coptic word for "goldsmith" was '2amnoub' /hamnoub/ or /hamnoob/ (Smith, 1983, p.68). Here 'noub' means "gold". The Nubian word for "gold" is now 'nab'; this is related to Coptic 'noub'. Nubia is the place where the Egyptians aquired their gold. The Ancient Hebrew word for "gold" is 'ZWB'. Here there is a correspondance between 'ou' and 'W'. The Coptic suffix 'ou' means "them" and the Ancient Hebrew suffix 'WM' means "them". Also Coptic 'ou' is used to mean "what" or "who" and in Ancient Hebrew 'W' is prefixed to the first word of a question.
There is also evidence from English. As I said Ancient Hebrew 'W' is prefixed to the first word of a question and in English question words begin with 'w' as in 'who', 'what', 'why', 'where', 'which', and 'when', (also 'how' retains both 'w' and 'h'). This was developed at a time when 'w' was changing to 'h' and we can see 'wh' here; it appears as 'hw' in Gothic. This is very strong evidence in view of the related Coptic evidence above. Note the name 'Cohen' where 'h' is pronounced as /w/; this is further evidence of the shift from /w/ to /h/, as 'Cohen' comes from the Hebrew word for "priest" which is actually 'KWN' rather than 'khn'. Ancient Hebrew WLK means "walk" and this corresponds to that very same English word 'walk'. That can not be a coincidence, especially in view of a substantial number of Hebrew-English correspondances.
The Vei language is of the Mande subgroup of the Niger-Congo language family in Africa. The Vei word 'wuru' is defined as "to bear, bring fourth, beget" (Koelle, 1968, p.225). There are related words in Ancient Hebrew similar in spelling and meaning to 'wuru', such as: 'WR' "conceive", 'WRW', 'WRN' "conception", 'WRY', 'WRYN' "bear", 'WRYUN' "birth", 'WRUT' "pregnant". Also in Ancient Hebrew 'WR' means "mountain" and 'WRW' means "hill" while in the African language Ociherero the words for "hill" are 'uru' and 'ru'. Ociherero is also a Niger-Congo language, but it is of the Bantu subgroup. the dual parallels here I find to be strong evidence for the original phonetic value of the fifth Hebrew letter. This evidence may also allow us to reconstruct a few Egyptian words as Ancient Egyptian is the probable connection between these related forms.
I discovered other evidence, which also leads to peculiar evidence of the origin of the 'w' grapheme. To appreciate this evidence you should be familiar with the Egyptian 'water' symbol (it is a horizontal zig-zag something like: MMMMMM), and the early Semitic letter for san (shin) which is the same letter as Greek sigma except in a different orientation; it looks like our 'w'. The Egyptian 'water' symbol had the phonetic value of /n/ during the Greco-Roman period, but it had the value of /m/ prior to that period, but for this study it is sufficient simply to recognize the epigraphic fact that the grapheme was the origin of our 'M'; usually in books on the alphabet 'M' can be seen as having come from the Semitic letter mayim which was written as a zig-zag similar to the Egyptian symbol. Also 'mayim' ('MYM') means "water" in Ancient Hebrew. For those not familiar with the Greek letters, sigma appears as 'w' rotated clockwise 90 degrees (facing as 'E'), while the Semitic letter san is in the same orientation as 'w'.
What I discovered may at first seem a curiosity, until you here the Biblical reference which seems to correspond, then you will see that this has significance, and becomes very suggestive as to the origin of the 'w' grapheme in its use for the sounds /w/ and /oo/. The letter san (sigma) is a symbol of a wave, and note that the letter stands for /s/ and 's' is also obviously a symbol of a wave. You can see how it is a segment of the Egyptian water symbol. As I have indicated the fifth Hebrew letter should be transliterated as 'W'. The name of Moses is acutally spelled 'MSW' in Ancient Hebrew. I do not have the sigma font type, so I will use lower case 'w' for sigma, imagine it turned 90 clockwise: then the name of Moses can be spelled 'MwW' with 'M' pointing down, sigma pointing right and 'W' pointing up. All three letters are the same grapheme except in different orientations. For simplification I will use the King James translation of Exodus 2:10 which tells how Moses was named as follows: "And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and she became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she said, because I drew him out of the water." If we take the Egyptian water symbol and parse it we could spell the name of Moses with the parts. This can not be a coincidence.
I would admit it is difficult to sort out the origin of the 'w' grapheme from this. We have epigraphic evidence from Europe that it originated from doubling 'v' and 'v' was sometimes used for 'u' (actually Latin -vs seems to correspond to Greek -os pronounced /us/). It may be that 'MwW' is an Alexandrian spelling. Sigma (or san) is also found in Egyptian writing, so it must have preceaded the formation of 'M' which originated from the Egyptian 'water' symbol. 'M' is found in both Latin and Greek and it predates the use of 'w' for /w/. The evidence is very suggestive of the use of 'w' for /w/ by the influence of the book of Exodus chapter 2 verse 10. It also helps to support the conclusion that the proper transliteration of the Ancient Hebrew letter he is 'w'. It should be noted that the name of Moses is transliterated in Greek as 'mohse'. This may indicate that the pronunciation was /mauswe/. There are different grammatical uses of the '-W' suffix which are probably distinguished in pronunciation.
Also of significance is the derivation of the Turkish word for "water"; the word is 'su' (pronounced /sou/ or /soo/). This form is derived from Exodus 2:10 by misunderstanding the morphology of the derivation of the name of Moses. It is easy to misunderstand because the 'M-' prefix means "from" in Ancient Hebrew. It could have been assumed that the Egyptian word for water was 'su': 'msu'* having been understood as meaning "from water" in accordance with Exodus 2:10. 'MYM' ("water") is derived that way being defined as "from ocean" where 'M-' is "from" and 'YM' is "ocean". But 'MSW' means "salvation" and is derived from 'MS' "rescue" + '-W' (noun forming).
